AMD 2013 APUs to include ARM Cortex-A5

Following the announcement of HSA Foundation bringing together AMD and ARM, AMD also announced it will implement ARM's Cortex-A5 processor in its 2013 APUs.

Although there have been numerous rumours on what ARM's processor could do inside an APU, it appears that AMD is only aiming at ARM's TrustZone technology for now. If you take a closer look at it, we must say that it was a logical choice since both ARM and Intel have some sort of hardware trusted platform/security technologies, while AMD's APUs were somewhat lacking.

The easiest way for AMD is to licence an exisiting technology and while Intel is not exactly sharing, ARM was apparently more than happy to. TrustZone tech is still ARM's technology and in order to use it, AMD needs to squeeze in ARM's processor inside its APU. According to available details, ARM's Cortex-A5 is the best processor for such application.

Of course, some details are still unknown and some questions are yet to be answered, e.g. how exactly are AMD's x86 and ARM Cortex-A5 going to work together inside an APU. According to available info, AMD is planning on using this combination with its low-power APUs that will be aimed at tablet markets. Of course, we may see some future APUs with something from ARM as well, but that will not happen until 2014.

Licencing ARM's TrustZone technology may be just the beginning of sucessful cooperation between AMD and ARM, and we would not be surprised if we see more in near future.